


be my beginning, my middle, my end

by boatstoesta



Series: walk alongside of me [3]
Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Engagement, F/F, Idiots in Love, Marriage Proposal, Teacher AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:13:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29602980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boatstoesta/pseuds/boatstoesta
Summary: Teacher AU—Beca and Chloe have been teaching side by side for years. Finally ready to propose, Beca just has one problem—actually getting a ring.The third and final part of the walk alongside of me series, the one with all the promises.
Relationships: Chloe Beale & Beca Mitchell, Chloe Beale/Beca Mitchell
Series: walk alongside of me [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735621
Comments: 21
Kudos: 76





	be my beginning, my middle, my end

**Author's Note:**

> The series is finally coming to a close! It is a story that has been overwhelmingly important to me and I've been waiting until I felt like I could finish this the way it deserved. Like all good things, it can't be forced. 
> 
> I knew my journey as a writer for this ship would never feel complete until I gave them their proper ending in this universe, and now that I have I can't express how contented I am. Thanks so much to everyone who sticks around to read what I post. Only love for you ❤️

Beca’s heartbeat picks up as the front door clicks open. She’s on the couch, trying to focus on her book, but now she holds her breath.

Home from work later than usual, parent-teacher conferences have been keeping Chloe at the school every night this week. It’s the tragedy of having a girlfriend who is so thoroughly committed to her job—sometimes she has to wait for Chloe’s attention. 

The door closes with a gentle snap. Chloe’s footsteps echo in the hallway, and Beca can’t help but feel the anticipation ride up in her chest. 

The beauty of having a girlfriend who is thoroughly committed to her job, however, is what’s happening right now—waiting for her to find the place Beca chose to camp out with butterflies in her stomach. 

They’ve been together for four years now, and Beca never gets tired of this. Of Chloe coming home.

As the footsteps near, Beca does her best to appear absorbed by her book. There’s a silence of awareness as Chloe walks into the room, the connection between them stretching out as soon as they’re close. She looks at Beca with tired but happy eyes.

“Hi,” Chloe says softly, pausing in the doorway. She watches Chloe set her phone and her keys on the coffee table. 

Beca rests her book on her lap. “How did the meetings go?”

“Good,” she replies lightly. “Really good.” 

A soft smile plays on Chloe’s lips as she leans down and pulls her heels off one by one, as though looking away for even a second might cause Beca to disappear. She watches Chloe over the top of her book, chewing on her bottom lip as Chloe pulls her jacket off. 

The couch dips as Chloe slides her knee in, pulling the book from Beca’s hands. She’s careful to mark the page as she sets it down on the coffee table. 

Beca’s body sings in Chloe’s presence. She knows that Chloe missed her. _She_ missed Chloe. The real, deep down, _I miss this person from my very gut_ kind of missing her. She’s used to coming home from work together, not this waiting. 

Hovering over her, Chloe pushes Beca’s knees apart, creating space for herself. 

“Dinner is in the oven,” Beca informs her, already seeing Chloe’s intentions in her eyes. 

Chloe brushes her nose against the smooth and open space of Beca's neck. “Don’t tell me I work late for one week and you suddenly learned new tricks.” 

All these years later, Beca’s breath still hitches when Chloe gets close like this, when she teases her about the silliest things. Like her complete inability to cook, for example, or how she forgets the way general respiratory functions work when Chloe touches her like that.

“Don’t get too excited,” she breathes, “it’s just a pizza.”

“Excited? I think you mean relieved.”

Beca rolls her eyes. The food she makes has never killed anyone... to her knowledge.

“You’re so hilarious, Chlo.”

Soft lips capture hers as she barely finishes her sentence. Strong hands grasp Beca’s, dragging them up to make them hold her face. Beca obeys, cradling Chloe’s cheeks in her palms, kissing her deeper. 

The kiss breaks with a soft sigh, Beca instinctually leaning in to follow it. 

Chloe rests her lips on Beca’s temple, and Beca can feel the way they curl into the smallest smile. “I love doing this,” Chloe murmurs.

Beca chuckles, pushing Chloe’s hair back from her face. “Kissing me?”

“Coming home to you,” she whispers. “I could picture us doing this forever.” She leans in and kisses Beca again. “But I love doing that, too.”

Beca swallows. 

It took so long for them to have this—to push past the uncertainty, to let her walls down. To be free to love each other in front of everyone. 

In some ways, it did feel like a long time. But years later, it’s as though it all happened in the blink of an eye. A drop in the bucket in the span of what their whole life together could be. One day Beca was floating along, and then suddenly… it was them. It was loving Chloe. 

It was summer days in the hammock where they held each other under the warm and rough sun. It was Christmas with their families, back to back to back to accommodate everyone. It was deciding together that New Year’s is a stupid holiday and being curled up in bed by ten o’clock, happy and safe and warm, every year for the last four years.

It was suddenly wanting to have plans, but only wanting them if they were with Chloe. It was a hundred different promises made without ever saying the word ‘promise.’ All those long talks while grading homework and standing under a stream of hot water in the shower—their promises looked like the words ‘you will’ and ‘I will’ and ‘we will.’ All those long talks in the middle of the night, every time they said ‘somehow’ and ‘someday,’ they were making promises. 

She sighs into the feeling of Chloe pressed against her, the relief of her being home. She wants to make good on every single one of them. If there’s ever someone who has made her believe in something permanent, in something constant, it's Chloe.

Chloe kisses her throat, making a soft trail to her chest. Her lips curl into a knowing smirk about exactly where this is leading, and she decides to tease Chloe first.

“Chloe.” She slides her fingers into her thick red hair. A soft sigh escapes her lips, giving her away. “Dinner is almost ready.”

“Dinner can wait,” Chloe says, curling one hand under her thigh so she can spread it further.

***

Beca has never had a reason to look at engagement rings before, so of course, she had no idea how complicated it is.

She scrolls through another page of prospective rings on her computer, more lost now than she had been on the previous twenty-six pages. 

Tapping her fingers anxiously on her desk, she stares at each ring, hoping one of them will just pop out and say ‘I’m Chloe’s! Nice to meet you.’

The choir office isn’t the most ideal place for this, but where else would she do it? At home Chloe is always bouncing around, floating between the rooms, occasionally walking by just to give her a drive-by kiss and go back to what she was doing before. Beca loves those drive-bys, but they aren’t exactly great for sneaking around and shopping for rings. 

She squints at one that looks… almost right. She groans, pushing her hair back from her face. 

She can’t give something to Chloe that’s _almost_ right. But there are so many freaking options. Square cut diamond? Pear cut? Oval? And what the hell is a _princess cut?_

“Hey, Bec!”

Snapping out of it, Beca jolts upright and slams her laptop shut at the sound of Chloe’s voice. 

“Oh, um—hi, Chlo,” she stutters, swallowing nervously. 

Chloe raises an eyebrow at her. “You good?” 

“Yeah, yeah,” she says, clearing her throat. She rolls her chair back away from the desk. “Just got caught up emailing something to my dad, you caught me off guard.”

“Oh. Well, I was just coming by to tell you that some students in my homeroom were talking some pretty big smack about the Friday kickball games. They want to know about putting on a tournament, see who the true champs are and all that.” She laughs. “What do you think? Want to do it?”

Beca smirks. She can see the twinkle in Chloe’s eyes already, knowing instantly that she’s already started planning it in her mind.

“Principal Davis cleared the idea?” 

“Of course.”

Beca chuckles. “Then it’s on,” she says.

Chloe’s lips spread into a wide grin. She all but skips over to Beca’s desk, settling onto Beca’s lap and wrapping her arms around Beca’s neck. 

She hums, looking unmistakably at Beca’s lips. “It’ll be fun,” she says. 

Her mouth runs dry as they look into each other’s eyes. An unspoken communication passes between them, a silent conversation. Words aren’t needed to know exactly what Chloe is thinking about right now. The way her gaze drifts between her eyes and her mouth says it all. 

“Someone’s in a trouble-making mood,” Beca murmurs.

“Someone makes it hard not to be,” she whispers back. She gives Beca a soft kiss on the cheek, letting it linger. “I’ve got to get back, my next class starts in five minutes. Text me if you need anything.”

She stands, ready to go, but Beca stops her by reaching for her hand.

“Chloe?”

“Yeah?”

“I need something.” Beca gives her pleading eyes that she knows Chloe can’t do anything about right now.

Chloe throws her head back in amusement. “Tonight, baby. Tonight. Enjoy your free period, okay?”

Beca watches Chloe walk out of her office and glances at her laptop, thinking about how she hasn’t even figured out engagement ring settings yet (and so far she’s counted seventeen types.)

“I’ll try,” she mutters to herself.

***

Beca can remember so clearly when those ‘maybe someday’ talks turned into something else entirely for her. She remembers that Chloe was folding laundry while music played in the background. They were on the floor of the living room, backs leaned up against the couch and wine glasses nearby.

“I want a puppy,” Chloe said out of nowhere, tossing a shirt onto the pile. 

Beca paused, taking a long sip of wine to buy herself some time. 

“A puppy?” 

Questions buy time, an infallible trick learned from her dad.

“That’s a lie,” Chloe said. “I want two puppies. And two cats.”

Beca raised her eyebrows. She’s always known that Chloe is an animal person, she just never realized how many she necessarily wanted in their home at one time. 

Beca loves animals, too—she does—but she always told herself that she would wait for that particular responsibility. She wanted to use the time before she turned thirty to travel and do all the things she knew would be harder to accomplish later on.

But then Chloe started talking. 

“My dad was allergic to dogs, so I never got to have them growing up. I had friends who did, though. I always thought that puppies had the cutest bellies. I’ve always wanted a chubby puppy and to have its brother or sister so they can grow up together. Can you imagine if we got the cats at the same time, too? The dogs would grow up so good with them, and by the time they’re fully grown the cats will be used to them. They might even play together.”

It was then that Beca realized how much time Chloe spends like this—thinking about their future, the things they will do together. 

Oftentimes Chloe would zone out, and it was like she would go somewhere else entirely. Beca would have no idea what she was thinking about. It struck Beca then that perhaps Chloe had been thinking about them this whole time.

“Two dogs and two cats, huh?” Beca said. “You want the animals to outnumber us, don’t you?”

Chloe shrugged, reaching out for another shirt to fold absentmindedly. “We could always even the score a bit.”

“What do you mean?” 

“We could have a baby.” Chloe spoke quietly, as though she was testing the waters. “Or two,” she continued. 

Beca’s eyebrows raised. “Or two,” she said, her voice an octave higher than she meant.

Chloe laughed. “You keep repeating everything I say. Alright, I get the message loud and clear. We’ll shelve this conversation until we’re ready for it.”

Chloe turned back to the pile of clothes, but Beca grabbed her wrist. Chloe was there, telling her she wanted so many things with her, and it was like a lightning strike to the chest. It shut everything down and started it back up at a new rhythm. 

“Hey, wait,” Beca murmured. Her thumb brushed back and forth on the inside of Chloe’s wrist. Chloe’s too-blue eyes held hers almost nervously. “We can have four cats and dogs. We can have as many as can fit in this place. If you need room for more, we can move.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. “And… if you want babies… we can have those, too, Chlo.”

Chloe’s lips twitched before spreading into a wide smile. “We can?”

Beca nodded, sliding her hand up and pulling Chloe in. “Of course we can.”

They wrap each other up in a hug, folding each other in the blanket of this promise. Inhaling deeply, Chloe nuzzled her face into the crook of Beca’s neck. 

Now, looking back, Beca thinks that Chloe was trying to get a handle on how one person could make her so happy. Beca does that herself, too, from time to time. At work, she’ll catch herself staring at the clock, but really she’ll be thinking about Chloe. She’ll be thinking to herself what a lucky idiot she is, how beautiful Chloe is, how she makes her feel just right. Safe. Secure. 

Later, Chloe explained to Beca how two of everything was the perfect number, that way everybody came in pairs. The two of them, two kids, two dogs, two cats. Everyone would have their perfect duo and it’d be mathematically impossible for anyone to ever be lonely. 

That night Beca stayed up after they went to bed, imagining Chloe scratching the soft belly of a new puppy from the local shelter, watching two of them pad after Chloe all day. They’d love her so instantly. Sometimes Beca feels that way—like a rescue puppy that fell in love with Chloe the moment she scooped her up. 

She had pictured the puppies growing into dogs, of Chloe resting their toddlers on their backs and letting them pretend they’re riding around on them. The babies would be laughing so hard it would fill the whole house up until there wasn’t possibly room for any more happiness, but then Chloe would crack up, too, at nothing more than how hard the kids were laughing, and just like that there would suddenly be room for more. 

She remembers wanting it so bad her chest physically ached. She remembers the exact moment her future took on the shape of it all. 

Of all the ‘somedays’ that Beca and Chloe have ever given each other, this one is her favorite.

***

The part that comes next, this is where it gets tricky. Forever is on Beca’s grocery list. She wants it, she does.

Figuring out the size of Chloe’s ring finger, on the other hand, is a critical but problematic step.

Chloe has just barely left for the store and Beca knows, she _knows,_ this is her shot.

Scrambling around in the bedroom, Beca finds one of Chloe’s rings, one she wears all the time. She grabs it and puts it on the dresser, fishing an old receipt from her pocket to trace around the ring. 

She bursts out laughing to herself at the number of times she’s watched Chloe slip this ring off and set it on the nearest-available surface for _reasons._

“Okay, okay, stop distracting yourself. You need this for the jeweler. Get it together team.” 

Next on her list of concerns should be the way she’s started talking to herself.

The front door slams and Beca nearly chokes. Her eyes go wide and she freezes completely. Fast-paced footsteps echo in the hall and suddenly Beca is scrambling. 

“I completely forgot that the grocery store closes early on Sundays.” Chloe walks through the bedroom door. “Looks like it’s pizza again—oh!”

Beca does the only thing she can think of. The only logical escape.

She grabs Chloe by the hand and enthusiastically initiates sex. 

Dragging her to the bed, she covers Chloe’s mouth with her own, pushing her down onto the mattress a little harder than she meant to.

As Beca mounts her, Chloe laughs into the kiss. “I barely made it to the end of our street before turning around, don’t tell me you missed me that much already.”

She ignores her and continues. Sure enough, it works. A very… _athletic_ thirty minutes later, Operation: Make Chloe Moan So Hard She Won’t Want To Walk Until Tomorrow is a success. She gave a performance of a lifetime, although her gaze did flit back to the ring on the dresser from time to time. Paranoia works hard, but Beca works harder.

Chloe is draped haphazardly across the bed, eyes closed as she slips into a post-orgasm nap. Beca sits on the edge, her fingers brushing the tips of Chloe’s hair where it is splayed on the pillow. 

She stares down at Chloe’s face—her long eyelashes, her adorable nose.

“You have terrible timing,” she whispers to her sleeping love. 

Quietly returning the ring to Chloe’s jewelry box, Beca tucks the receipt with the perfectly traced outline into a pair of winter boots.

***

She is standing over a glass case with the jeweler, suddenly hit by an unmistakable feeling of certainty.

“That’s the one,” Beca says, pointing to the ring in the case that she knows is Chloe’s.

“Good eye, Ms. Mitchell. That diamond cut—”

“I really appreciate the information you’re about to give me, but my brain cannot handle any more cuts and settings and clarities and—” She stops herself. “This is the one. I’m sure.”

***

The ring stays hidden in that same boot for two weeks before Beca works up the nerve. She’s been so torn up about finding the right moment that she started to worry that there is no right moment.

That was until the right moment, of course.

They sit on the couch, each leaning back against the armrests with their feet in the middle. 

One blanket covers both of their legs as Beca reads her book, Chloe typing away on her laptop. Beca doesn’t even mean to glance in Chloe’s direction, but she does, and it’s that look of focus on Chloe’s face that does her in. God, it makes her heart race. 

This is the forever that Beca wants. It’s this, it’s this. It has nothing to do with vast moments of fireworks and explosions, it’s not the perfect script you see in the movies. It’s this. 

It’s laying on the couch and not even looking at each other, not even speaking, because the comfortable quiet of being together is already everything. It’s just wanting to be with the other person for no reason at all. It’s knowing that Beca could be reading anywhere, and if it were anywhere but here, she’d be missing Chloe so much she wouldn’t know what to do with herself.

Her book falls into her lap before she even realizes it. “Come on, I want to take you somewhere,” she says abruptly.

“Now?” Chloe asks, looking at her like she might be a little crazy. “Where?” 

Beca shakes her head at her. “Just trust me.”

***

They walk out onto the kickball field, bodies cloaked by the cool air. The stars are out for them tonight—they’re bright and welcoming and they want to know what happens next.

Keeping their hands linked, Beca stops them when they reach the first base.

“Can I tell you about something? Something I haven’t told you about before?” Beca says. “Can I tell you about the moment I knew I was falling for you?”

Chloe laughs. “Of course you can.”

“Principal Davis walked into my office one day. I’d just started working at the school, and she asked me to volunteer to watch over lunches on Fridays. I didn’t really want to, but I figured what’s the harm, you know? Then she told me I would be assigned to do it with you, and my stomach sank. I would have given anything to go back in time just to say no.”

Chloe’s smile falters a little in confusion. She tilts her head to the side. “Okay, this is less romantic than I had envisioned.”

“No, I—” she fumbles over her words. “Don’t you get it? Even then, I knew what would happen if I let myself be around you. I was so determined not to want you, but I wanted you already. I wanted—I wanted to know everything about you. I wanted so badly _not_ to want that. But you… you were there, and I couldn’t look away. For the life of me, I haven’t been able to look away from you since the minute I showed up, Chloe.”

Trying to find the strength to keep talking, Beca grasps Chloe’s hand a little firmer. She breathes deeply, and the scent of Chloe mixed with the damp earth washes over her.

“I don’t think I ever really loved another person before you. Maybe I thought I did, but I didn’t even know how wrong I was. I couldn’t know. I didn’t know yet. You came into my life, completely unannounced at that. Half of me was saying that I was nowhere near ready, and the other half was yelling to make you mine before I completely fucked up the chance.” 

Beca’s heart beats wildly out of her chest. She isn’t afraid. But, God, isn’t it such a thing? To ask someone for their forever?

“I can’t promise that it’s going to be easy,” Beca chokes out. “Or that I’ll always say and do the right thing. I can only promise that I’m always going to love you, I wouldn’t have the slightest clue how to quit loving you. I promise that I’ll always wait for you to come home to me. That I’ll be your favorite distraction when you’re trying to work. That I’ll always, always hold your hand in the grocery store parking lot.”

Chloe’s hand reaches up to cradle her face, carefully, as if it’s as delicate as a flower. Beca tries to comprehend the surreal fact that someone as amazing as her loves her so much. Her brain almost can't compute.

“I promise to make you feel safe,” she says through a tight throat. “I promise to never stop making you promises.”

“Bec,” Chloe whispers.

“I want to look at you and say ‘this is my wife,’ Chloe, I just want everything with you. You can have everything from me, I want you to have everything from me.”

She extracts Chloe’s hands from her face, watching tears stream openly down Chloe’s cheeks, feeling them stream openly down her own. She does this so she can drop a single knee onto the dusty mound where Chloe once promised Beca she had her number.

A shaky hand reaches for the ring in the pocket of her jacket. Hoping she’s doing this right, she opens the box. She wants this to be exactly how Chloe would have imagined. She wants to be the person Chloe has imagined her whole life.

“Chloe. Will you marry me?”

She all but throws herself onto Beca. Tumbling back, completely in the dirt now, Chloe throws her arms around her neck. She kisses Beca tenderly, adoringly, and Beca returns it in full, forgetting about anything and everything else.

“Yes,” Chloe says, kissing her again. “Yes, yes, yes.” She says it over and over, alternating between kisses and yesses.

They both grin ear to ear. Underneath Chloe’s expression is a deep joy that is echoed in Beca’s chest.

“I knew, too,” Chloe breathes. “I knew I loved you before you were ever mine. I sat up one night and I just knew. I knew this feeling in my gut was there for a reason. That you put it there.”

The ring is still in Beca’s hand—Chloe knocked her over before she had a chance to put it on her. Laughing in the dirt, they slide it onto her ring finger. For a moment they just stare at it, taking it in.

“I always knew it was you,” Chloe says quietly, meeting her gaze again. 

She slides her hand to Chloe’s nape, pulling her closer. 

It’s all that matters.


End file.
